Like a Promise
by ashardoffreedom
Summary: Canon AU. The words were a blessing. Izaya disagreed.


Like a Promise

AU: Soulmate words are a blessing. Izaya disagrees.

* * *

UoUoUoUoUoUoU

* * *

Shinra saw them once, and only once.

He had whistled upon seeing the rough black letters. "Lucky you."

Izaya, his bloodied jacket on the chair behind him, had scoffed. "Please. Soulmates are a restriction on my love. I couldn't be contained in such a way."

His skin itched. Maybe from the black market antiseptic that Shinra used—he knew exactly where Shinra got his medication and exactly how impure and questionable it was—maybe from the thin black thread that lanced in and out of his arm, right beneath the stark words. Maybe from the words themselves. They were his burden, his shame.

Right on his skin for all to see.

Shinra was quiet. He didn't have a soulmark—not many people did, in the grand scheme of things. When they were in school together, he used to proclaim loudly that his lack of a mark only increased the proof of his love—Celty didn't have a voice after all. Izaya had seen the jealousy for what it was and coveted that emotion, hoarded it with the rest of ugly, twisted feelings that made up of his reasons for loving humanity.

When the last stitch was done, Shinra placed the needle back on its tray and began to layer paste and bandages on the wound. Without mentioning it, Shinra also covered the scars and the words.

"Do you know?" He asked quietly.

Izaya paused.

"You saw what it said. Does it really matter?"

" . . . I guess it doesn't."

Izaya laughed, high and bright. "No need to worry, Shinra. More love for the rest of the world."

Shinra let out a sigh of a breath. "Only ten percent of the people in the world get those tattoos. And you would squander yours."

Izaya's eyes were the color of blood on steel, of a wound festered.

"Please. It was squandered before it had even begun."

* * *

UoUoUoUoUoUoU

* * *

Masaomi Kida had words.

It was more common among the younger generation, about one in four. Scientists speculated that eventually, everyone would have words, people would start to define their futures by the words that they would get, by the people that they would meet.

Kida's words wrapped around his left collarbone, usually hidden in the winter, shown off in the summer. Even before Izaya came face to face with the gang leader, he knew about the block letters, almost machine-like in their perfection, that stamped out on his skin.

' _I almost didn't recognize you.'_

What would it mean, to know that that defined their relationship?

Izaya was no one to judge, but that question, that delicious question, lingered on his mind. Oh, he would be fun to play with.

He pushed Saki into his path.

Saki didn't have words. That didn't stop her, even with her apathy and her lighter air. When she was fourteen, Saki gave four months' worth of savings to a back-alley tattoo artist to ink the words "Izaya Orihara" across her right hip.

Izaya was the one who had told her the tattoo artist to go to.

He wouldn't deny that there was a certain thrill that he got when he saw his name inked on her body. She had shown it to him, when it was irritated and fresh, red rimmed like eyes after crying, her face shining with pride.

Izaya had tranced his fingers over it, almost reverent, and watched how she shivered at his touch. He smiled and told her he liked it, watched her fall a little deeper down the rabbit hole.

He did not remove his jacket and show him the spiky lettering curling just beneath his elbow.

When Izaya had seen Masaomi's words, he had paused, and smiled, and wrapped an arm around Saki's shoulder. Humans with words were the best to play with.

Halfway through their relationship, Izaya had told Saki to say the words traced on the tanned collarbone. After he had gotten a new haircut, perhaps. Whenever it pleased her. But casually, without thought, no suspicion and no premeditation.

Saki did. Masaomi fell, the way that he had planned.

He hesitated and was cowardly and was strong and was in love and when he was at his weakest, Izaya knelt close to Saki and whispered in her ear and told her to show him, show him what was hiding under her cardigan and tank top.

Izaya's claim striped across her hip.

Masaomi didn't save her after that. And when he decided not to, Izaya was cemented as both his god and as hers.

Hers out of abandonment, out of the sheer adoration that she had always had for him.

His because of the guilt, because of the control, because he knew that Izaya had given him Saki and had given him hope for the words etched on his skin, and had taken it away to see what he would do.

He had abandoned a girl to die because of Izaya.

She had been abandoned because of him.

He watched with a delightful smile as Saki sat in a hospital bed and Masaomi continued to visit her.

Every visit, Saki would press down on the tattoo on her hip and Masaomi's eyes would get a little bit darker.

* * *

UoUoUoUoUoUoU

* * *

The words worked like this:

They were supposed to be perfect. To lead you to perfection, to find the one that was perfect for you. No guessing, no worries. Their words were on your skin. And even if yours weren't on theirs, they were still perfect for you, even if you weren't perfect for them.

It was the stuff of romance novels and blockbuster movies. The stories of high school girls and old men left alone. The thing that kept teenagers, in the mess of hormones and love, watching their skin the showers each and every day. It was the hope that older folks felt when their lives went down to ruin and fatigue.

 _Maybe_ , they all thought, _I'll wake up with words tomorrow._

It was a hope that burned bright for everyone.

* * *

UoUoUoUoUoUoU

* * *

Shinra wasn't the only one who had ever seen his words.

Izaya may have loved what he did, but not everyone he worked for loved him back. There was a good reason that he walked with a swagger and a switchblade—both weapons for an inevitable fight. The color gangs were easy, fun. No heavy lifting there. Even if they were too dumb to be scared of his words, they weren't stupid enough to overlook his knife.

Shiki had been an accident.

He was young, and just getting involved with the yakuza, with this whole other level of humanity that he could play with and manipulate. He was high on the power that it gave him, the rush through his veins, the knowledge at his fingertips, ready and willing for him to just observe and take.

He had made enemies. Small ones, just the lower yakuza that he hadn't thought would a threat.

But Izaya was seventeen, softer and not sweet, never sweet, but easier. More vulnerable. His knife skills hadn't been acquired overnight, nor had his stamina, nor had his reputation.

All of these things found him in the back alley with a broken wrist and a stab wound in his side, blood that wasn't his own in his hair and across his palms, blood that was his under his nails and soaking into his shirt.

Shiki had found him like that, back against the dusty stone, feet in a puddle of blood, balling his jacket up against his stab wound while he stepped over the wounded body of one of his victims.

Three had gotten away. Maybe he had scared them when he had killed two of their friends. Maybe they thought he was dead already.

Perhaps it had been luck that Shiki found him. Izaya rather doubted it.

He looked impossible against the blood and dirt of the alleyway in his white suit and his fancy shoes. Izaya had had money, ever since he found that information was richer than any metal could be, but Shiki wore it with an ease that hadn't yet come to the young information broker.

"Well, Izaya-kun," Shiki said over the top of expensive sunglasses. It was night, Izaya didn't know what action film he was pretending to be in. "You seem to have gotten yourself into a pickle."

"Shiki-san," Izaya said slickly. He had his charm, if nothing else. "How charming to find you here."

Shiki stayed silent for a moment, looking over the informant's wrecked form, before stopping on his face for a moment. His eyes traveled across his body again, this time stopping at his arm, widening just a moment before hiding behind the mask.

"Come on," the man said as he placed a firm grip on Izaya's shoulder. "Let's get you someplace safe. You're close with that fresh-faced underground doctor, aren't you?"

Izaya's mind was too slow to catch up with this. "You're helping me?"

Black eyes traced the line of his body back down to the crook of his right arm.

Izaya followed his gaze and immediately slapped his other hand over the words. "It's nothing," he insisted. If he had been less delirious, or perhaps less young, he would have aimed for nonchalant instead of denial.

"It's never nothing," Shiki responded.

"It is to me. It doesn't mean anything."

Shiki shook his head once again and unconsciously traced a circle around his thigh.

"It means that someone's waiting for you."

Izaya wanted to scoff but something stopped him – this could be useful.

Shiki knew about his words and was just sentimental enough to believe that it meant that Izaya might have a heart underneath his twisted love and manic personality.

As long as Izaya didn't have one, it could be useful.

So he said nothing and watched as Shiki touched his own thigh as he carried the young boy to Shinra's.

Later, he would find out about a pretty woman in Shinjuku with a soulmate tattoo curling around her left ankle and filed it away in Shiki's file for when he would need it.

Much later, three bodies would be found in a back alley. They had no identification, no evidence to be traced. When the corpses were finally identified, it was realized that one of them had had a soulmate.

That one hadn't died from a stab to the heart or gut, the way the others had.

That one had died slowly from blood loss, originating from the near-surgical removal of the soulmate tattoo on his wrist.

* * *

UoUoUoUoUoUoU

* * *

Izaya had tried to remove it himself.

It wasn't only once.

Manic personalities like his came with fire, with inspiration, with genius and beauty and creation and god. They also came with lows to balance out that high, with darkness to counteract the brilliance. Sometimes being drunk on your own power simply transformed into being drunk. Sometimes being a genius meant being alone. And sometimes being unpredictable came with being unsteady.

The lows weren't often and they weren't long. He handled them with his grace and his intelligence. Sometimes a low meant that he played a few more games, or he played less games but crueler ones, sometimes a low meant he was lenient, sometimes a low meant he was psychotic. Sometimes a low meant he didn't play at all. Sometimes a low meant that after he played with his beloved humans and loved them even more, he came back to his beautiful apartment or his broken family home and pretended to love himself.

For all of his knife skills, the scars around the words were jagged and rough. The work of an amateur, or of a teenager with perceived problems and a blade, or of a person with not enough courage and too much at the same time.

His body wouldn't allow him to remove the tattoo himself. It made his hands shake as the blood crawled under his nails, made the skin tougher to peel, made his eyes look away and his breathing sharpen. Sometimes when the lows were constant, Izaya's switchblade saw more of his own blood than his enemies'.

The tattoo rewrote itself over the scar tissue every single time.

* * *

UoUoUoUoUoUoU

* * *

The words worked like this:

Very few people were born with words. They came gradually, over lifetimes, over moments in time and space and experiences. Very rarely did a soulmate pair both have words when they came together. Much more often, one would be worded and the other would wake up with black writing later in their relationship. Sometimes neither of them would be worded. Sometimes a person would get a soulmate tattoo only after their loved one was gone.

People still guessed, and questioned, and wondered, whether they had words or not.

The guarantee of a soulmate did nothing to make love any easier.

* * *

UoUoUoUoUoUoU

* * *

(Have you guys heard about the slasher?)

{{Eek!}}

[The slasher? That murderer who's been killing around Ikebukuro?]

(Yeah! It's said that it only goes after people with soulmate tattoos!)

{{Really? Whew. Dodged a bullet then.}}

[You don't have one, Setton?]

{{Nope. And good news, it looks like.}}

[Hmmm.]

(What about you, Taro? Do you have a soulmate?)

[I don't have a tattoo.]

[Do you, Kanra?]

(Please. As if I could be contained to one person :P)

* * *

UoUoUoUoUoUoU

* * *

During the slashing incident, Izaya learned two things:

One.

Anri Sonohara's skin was as free of soulmate marks as her heart was free of love. For someone who seemed to be coveted and liked by the people around her, it wasn't necessarily odd—a lot of people didn't have the tattoos—but it was noticeable. Some people might have seen the lack of tattoo as a freedom, but Anri clearly saw it as justification that her heart didn't need to love.

Anri Sonohara didn't have a soulmate.

Saika had many.

When she pulled the demon blade out of her arm, her skin exploded in black. All of the words in different handwriting, all of them screams of pain. Saika loved humans, and Saika was soulmates with anyone that she had ever stabbed.

It was understandable, considering that after the stabbing, Saika's children belonged to her and only her.

And wasn't that what it meant to be a soulmate, in the long run?

Two.

In the aftermath of the slasher and the panic, Izaya learned that Mikado hadn't been lying.

He didn't have a soulmate mark.

That didn't mean that he didn't have a soulmate.

He had wondered why Masaomi had started to wear that hoody more often than anything, but then he realized: Masaomi was hiding his tattoo. Based on his response to the slashing incident, all for Anri, all for Anri and all for Mikado, Masaomi hadn't told him yet.

An unmatched pair of soulmates.

Delicious.

When Masaomi reappeared in the chatroom, just to have a reminder or a reinforcer of what he had left behind, Izaya smiled.

What to do with this information?

* * *

UoUoUoUoUoUoU

* * *

Maybe he hadn't always been this way.

Izaya rather doubted it.

People often looked at him like he was insane, but that had never bothered him. He was manic and insane and schizophrenic and disturbed and terrible and cruel. He could be charismatic and brilliant and beautiful and creative and inspiring. He could convince you to sell him your secrets or your family or your life.

He never told the truth and he always told the truth. He would lie to your face and be the most sincere he had ever been.

Izaya did not worry about his own contradictions, his own cruelty, his own version of reality. It was the only version of the world that he had known. And he was supposed to give it up because others thought him strange or cruel or unusual?

Please.

The world could change first.

He was not an easy person to like.

He had never been loved.

The words on his arm were a self-fulfilling prophecy.

* * *

UoUoUoUoUoUoU

* * *

Here's a fact that kept Izaya up at night:

When Izaya had entered into high school, he had had a shocking, exhilarating and life-affirming fight with the most inhuman person that he had ever met. It was glorious and heart-stopping. It was terrible and disgusting.

Perhaps he might call it perfect under rose-tinted glasses.

His opponent? A monster.

But _his_ monster.

He pulled a few strings the next day, to figure out what he truly wanted to know.

The truth was this:

Shizuo Heiwajima didn't have words.

That night, he lit a fire underneath a kitchen knife and prayed that this time, this time, he could tear out a piece of a heart that he had never wanted.

He attempted to burn out his heart until he passed out from the pain.

* * *

UoUoUoUoUoUoU

* * *

His sisters were blessed with identical words. Both had gotten them on their fifth birthday, wrapping around their wrists so that it made a perfect circle when they clasped hands.

Individually, they said: _We're prefect together._

When they clasped hands, it just said: _Together_ , the rest hidden by each other.

Izaya didn't know when they had said the words to each other. Izaya didn't know if they had ever said the words at all.

When Izaya was a child, staring down at his own words on his arm while he cradled his sisters in his embrace, he didn't know if it was possible to love someone and hate someone so much at the same time.

When he was in high school, he learned differently.

* * *

UoUoUoUoUoUoU

* * *

In a moment of weakness, he had once brought it up to Shizuo.

"Hey, Shizu-chan," he whistled as he tight-roped across a railway. Shizuo ripped out another stop sign and prepared to throw it like a javelin. "Do you have words?"

The monster paused, like he had never even considered the question. Perhaps he had just never considered the question for Izaya.

He hesitated too long.

"What does it matter to you, shitty flea?"

"Oh, nothing. Curiosity."

"Even if I had words, what on earth would I do with them?" Shizuo ground out. "I'm better blank."

Izaya stuck out his tongue. "Of course a monster like you wouldn't have words!"

"IZAYA!"

Izaya will never admit to it, but although he dodged the stop sign with agile grace, he paused a moment too long when he saw the trash can coming towards him.

He considered that he probably deserved it when it hit him.

* * *

UoUoUoUoUoUoU

* * *

The words worked like this:

It was always something that your soulmate said.

It didn't matter if it was your first words to them or your last.

But whatever it was, it defined your relationship with them.

Those words were the essence of everything between the two of you.

Izaya's were simple and defined everything that he was. Everything that he could hope to be to another human.

Everything that he could hope to be to someone who wasn't human.

* * *

UoUoUoUoUoUoU

* * *

Mika Harima, before the surgery, had had soulmate words on her face. They were still there, hidden under plastic and makeup and dye.

They were about as damning as Izaya's:

 _Everything about our love is false._

It was in Seiji's handwriting, of course.

Once day, when he reclined in his chair and looked out of his windows, he mentioned it to Namie.

She had scoffed and continued her filing. "Please. That girl's words are just proof that soulmates are an overrated system."

"Do you say that because you don't have words?" Izaya said as he laced his fingers behind his head.

"Seiji doesn't either," his black-haired secretary immediately responded. Izaya couldn't see her, but he could feel the glare.

He hummed. Paused. Picked up the head that was on his desk and weaved his fingers through her hair. Stared into her closed eyes.

"Well, maybe it's because the head doesn't have a voice."

He laughed as he felt a knife imbed itself in the back of his chair.

Izaya stretched out his arms and brought the head closer to the sun.

His Valkyrie.

Maybe when he was dead, he would be rid of his words.

He wanted that guarantee.

* * *

UoUoUoUoUoUoU

* * *

Izaya left, after all was said and done.

He ventured away from Ikebukuro, from Tokyo, from Japan. He wandered, with words on his arm and a hitch in his step and he wondered that if he ever did venture back to the place where he came from, would he ever be able to dodge a flying vending machine?

Izaya was the villain of this story. He knew that from the beginning. What was the saying?

"Every villain is the hero of their own story."

No. Izaya was the villain. He had never pretended to be anything different. Heroes did not convince people to jump to their deaths. Heroes did not start an urban war so that they could die. Heroes did not brand people as monsters because said monsters would never, ever have words.

Heroes were nothing like Izaya.

But villains got to write the history books when they were done.

He wandered. He made a good share of money in China, in Korea, in India. He wandered his way up to Russia and spent good time there.

He ruined lives and then walked away. It was different than when he was in Tokyo. There, he could ruin lives and then stop back in to ruin them again.

When he thought back to Tokyo, he thought about Namie and his lovely apartment, Shinra and Celty, Mikado and Masaomi, Dota-chin's gang, the connections that he had and the web that he could weave.

A monster without words, that, no matter how much he had wished on that first day, would never be his.

Nostalgia meant nothing when he had burnt it all to the ground.

He would return to Ikebukuro when he was dead.

That city and its inhabitants had had enough of his love.

That city and its monster had never wanted it.

* * *

UoUoUoUoUoUoU

* * *

Izaya still had his web, even if ninety percent of his former acquaintances thought that he was dead.

Shinra and Celty didn't believe that he was gone. He was sure that a lot of people that he had personally ruined also knew that he was out there, biding his time.

He hoped that he was in the back of their minds. He hoped that sometimes, when they made bad decisions and when they made dangerous ones, he hoped that they thought about the information broker who could still have his fingers in too many pies and who could still kill them as easily with a sentence as he could with a knife.

He found out that Mikado got his words after the final battle, after everything.

Apparently they were in the middle of his back.

 _Are you really . . ._

They trailed off there.

A relationship of doubt and almost distaste. That was what Masaomi and Mikado had ahead of them. But what else could be expected from two baby gang leaders? From children who grew up too soon? For one who had always hid his dark side and one who had always wanted to have one?

Izaya hoped that their relationship had turmoil and hopelessness and despair and love. Because that was what it meant to be human.

Shinra and Celty had gotten married. They wanted to travel the world. Izaya hoped that his fragile web was strong enough to make sure that they didn't encounter him on their journeys.

Dota-chin's gang was still going strong. Izaya had never figured out if Walker and Erika had been soulmates, but he decided that in the end, they were inseparable with or without words that bound them that way.

Words weren't a guarantee of anything.

Saki was off somewhere, he didn't know exactly. He didn't ask his network to find out. As a passing thought, he wondered how she had taken his leaving, even if she seemed not to need him anymore. He wondered how she had taken Masaomi's.

The Awakusu-Kai had basically taken over his job. They would keep the peace. Shiki was smart and cunning and would be able to handle himself, even with that pretty little weakness of his hiding away in a lavish apartment.

Ikebukuro had no need of him anymore.

He didn't ask about Shizuo.

* * *

UoUoUoUoUoUoU

* * *

Because they were reckless and dumb as much as they were terrifying and awe-inspiring, they had lost control once.

It had been before the final battle, before all of Izaya's cards had fallen into their proper places.

But it was close enough that Izaya remembered that he was going to be brushing death soon.

So he had wandered his reckless ass back into Ikebukuro and taunted Shizuo with color gangs and insults and his switchblade.

He was so easy sometimes.

They had chased through the streets and Izaya had slowed himself just enough so that Shizuo could catch up. Even looking back, Izaya had no idea what his purpose had been. What had he expected to happen? Did he want to talk? To taunt? Had he expected miracles?

"You damn flea," Shizuo had said as he backed Izaya into an alleyway, "Didn't I tell you to get out of my city?"

"Aw, Shizu-chan, I thought that you would have missed my company," Izaya drawled.

The blonde's iron grip found its way around a drainpipe, pulling it off the wall.

"Shizu-chan, it's almost as if you don't want to play with me. Do I need to try harder? Play with that brother of yours instead? Or maybe I should play with Ruri-chan, see how he reacts to that."

The drainpipe imbedded itself in the brick a foot away from his crimson eyes.

"Wow, you missed. I guess we can't expect a monster to have good aim. Do you have good aim anywhere, Shizu-chan? Your lovers must be so disappointed."

"Shut up, flea."

He cocked his head as his back hit the brick behind him. "I'm just telling you the truth. There are drugs for that, you know, although how they would work on a monster like yourself is unknown to me. Maybe I should ask Shinra, he would—"

Izaya didn't know what it was that he had said, but suddenly there was a mouth on his.

Shizuo's mouth.

Izaya tangled his hands in blond hair and pushed his body up against hard planes and prevented himself from moaning, because that would just be undignified. A strong hand pulled his head back by his dark locks almost painfully in order to get a better angle and another hand wrapped itself around his too-small waist.

Izaya didn't close his eyes, because he was waiting for a punch or a knee or a kick or some sort of violence. He was also waiting for proof that Shizuo was drugged or making a mistake or being foolish or finally embracing the fact that this entire situation was batshit insane. Any moment now, Shizuo would realize that he was not embracing a human, he was embracing a flea. Any moment now, Shizuo would remember that as violent as this kissing was, it was not the violence that Shizuo wanted with Izaya.

Izaya pulled on his hair and was rewarded with a moan that he gobbled into his own mouth.

He had had fantasies that he would never admit to that began like this. With him being at Shizuo's mercy, and for once in their relationship, Shizuo not taking advantage of it.

Izaya tipped his head back further to slip deeper into the kiss.

Shizuo growled and moved his hand from Izaya's dark hair to join the other one at his waist, pulling him closer into his hips, grinding the hardness he couldn't ignore into the raven's own.

Was this adrenaline? A side effect of the fight? A side effect of malice? Surely there was no affection, no desire, no wanting or panting, no late nights with a mix of shame and ecstasy.

None on Shizuo's side, wordless as it was.

One of his hands trailed up Izaya's side, bunching up his jacket.

The other steadied Shizuo by gripping just underneath his elbow.

Right on top of his words.

The words that he had put there.

Izaya's sanity returned like a bucket of cold water.

His switchblade was flipped and ready, and as Izaya broke the kiss, he buried the blade in Shizuo's side. The blonde reeled back and Izaya ripped the blade out of tender flesh.

Too tender of flesh for it to be anything but human, regardless of how fast it healed.

"IZAYA. WHAT THE HELL."

They were not questions, regardless of the tone.

Izaya smiled and darted away. When he looked back to a shocked and bloodied Shizuo, he licked the blood off of his favorite blade and gave the smirk that had started the antagonism in the first place.

Hopefully Shizuo would take the gesture as a return to their usual playing field.

Because obviously Shizuo was a beast and had no control over his actions.

And obviously Izaya just wanted to get him close to stab him without the risk of a stop sign to the face.

And obviously, later in the privacy of his own apartment, Izaya wasn't going to use that switchblade, fresh with Shizuo's blood, to try to rip out his own.

* * *

UoUoUoUoUoUoU

* * *

This was how the words worked:

They were supposed to be a blessing.

Izaya disagreed.

* * *

UoUoUoUoUoUoU

* * *

Simon catches up to him while he's in Russia.

Izaya doesn't really know what to do with that information. Simon is the only one who has ever guessed at what he feels for Shizuo, with or without knowing his words.

" _You've got a bit of a complex about him, you know?"_

Yes, Simon, he knew.

He hadn't been in Ikebukuro for almost four years. He kept an eye on it a bit, sometimes carefully, sometimes not. Sometimes he would slip himself back onto the chatrooms like a ghost just to watch.

(Masaomi and Mikado were finally in a relationship. He wasn't sure where Anri Sonohara fit into it, but she was definitely still around. Celty and Shinra were out of the country. Namie was a black hole of information, but he was sure that he could find something if he dug a little bit deeper.)

"Izaya! How you? Been to long!" Simon, at the very least, never seemed to change. He had never been Izaya's supporter, but he had never been an enemy unless Izaya made a nuisance of himself. This far away, in Russia, where there were too many problems for Izaya to consider making them any worse, he was steadily in the non-nuisance category.

"Simon," Izaya said in carefully accented Russian, "as much as I like to hear the Japanese, I've been around long enough that we can talk the way that you prefer."

"We always could," Simon said solemnly. "But let me tell you how everything has been!"

There was nothing that Simon could say that Izaya didn't already know, but Simon told him anyway and Izaya let him, as they walked the streets of Moscow together and pretended that they could have ever been defined as old friends.

"I have a gift for you," Simon said.

Before Izaya could make a quip, Simon had shoved an envelope into his hands. His own pale fingers curled around the paper. Simon didn't let go of the envelope.

"It's been four years," he said softly. "You wouldn't be welcome but it would be easy to slip just the slightest bit back into that life."

Izaya's mouth went dry with the possibilities and the lack of them. Why on earth would Simon mention something that he already knew?

"It was good to see you, Izaya."

"You too, Simon," he said automatically.

Simon slipped back into the crowd, the same way that he had slipped out of it. It shouldn't have been hard to spot a six and a half foot black Russian, but apparently some feats were just easier in the streets of Ikebukuro.

Izaya waited until he had wandered back into his not-shabby-but-not-nice apartment to open up the envelope.

It was a full sheet of paper with only a few words.

 _I got my words, bastard._

Izaya leaned against the wall and slid down slowly, feeling the burn on his back.

He pressed the paper into his forehead.

Perhaps monsters got soulmates after all.

* * *

UoUoUoUoUoUoU

* * *

One hundred and thirty-seven.

That was the number of fights that he had gotten into with Shizuo over the decade that they had known each other, before Izaya had left Ikebukuro.

Fourteen years.

That was how long they had known each other.

Twenty eight years.

That was how long Izaya had been in this world. It was also how long Izaya had stared at words that damned him.

Sixty-two.

That was how many times the switchblade had entered into his arm. Perhaps he was a bit of a monster himself to survive that.

One.

The number of times that they had kissed.

Five.

The number of words that they had between them.

Even if their lives were looked at empirically, there was still no formula that would make sense.

The numbers didn't add up right.

* * *

UoUoUoUoUoUoU

* * *

Izaya snuck back into Ikebukuro with a whimper. There was no fanfare and there didn't need to be one.

It was extremely likely that he wouldn't be staying long.

It was night when he arrived. He snuck into an apartment that was not his own. He placed his shoes next to black dress shoes that were too large to ever fit him, hung his fur-lined jacket on an empty coatrack. He could feel the scar in his back at the base of his spine twinge in memory. He could feel his limping gait grow worse.

Did he even want to be back?

He slunk into the bedroom with a hope and a threat.

Shizuo woke to a hand covering his mouth, a switchblade on his throat and wicked red eyes in the dark.

He growled underneath the pale fingers.

"I hear you got words, Shizu-chan," Izaya murmured. "Now, why on earth would you tell me?"

Purple eyes sparked with anger as Izaya lazily removed his fingers.

"Bastard." The blonde drew out the word. Izaya was unsure if it was a prayer or a curse. "You know why."

"Say it," Izaya growled, pushing the knife harder into his neck.

Shizuo was silent.

"Say it!" A thin line of blood appeared underneath his blade.

Shizuo breathed in deeply and closed his eyes. "They're yours."

In a smooth motion, Izaya shoved the knife into his pocket and crushed his mouth to Shizuo's, pressing his fingers into the line that he had made on his throat.

They drowned in each other that night, the way that they always had.

Later, when Izaya laid on Shizuo's bare chest, dragging his fingers over the word burned over his heart, he murmured:

"Mine too. They were always yours."

"How long?" the question was asked while fingers slipped into the scar tissue, while nails bit into the words.

The word was dragged out of him.

"Always."

* * *

UoUoUoUoUoUoU

* * *

Ikebukuro subtly shifted in the weeks that followed.

The yakuza suddenly became a bit more skillful at their manipulations. Both their gains and their falls were great. The underground was suddenly a much cleverer place. A man named Chrome was the new big dog in town—forget the legacy of Izaya Orihara, there was a new man you went to for information.

A boy with an unknown smile came home from university to visit his boyfriend who had a faded yellow scarf around his arm. The words across his collarbone were traced with fingers that were possible of great cruelty and great restraint.

An unusual man and his even more unusual wife looked over wedding photos now three years old. She didn't have a head and he didn't have morals, but someone it was a beautiful love.

A girl with a blade and blank skin walked through town hearing the voices of her children, hearing the stories of their love and their marks and their soulmates. Her old friend had come back into town, and although she had never believed in the nonsense that was love, it would be good to see his version of it.

A van was filled with too many people and too many stories. Some of them had marks and some of them didn't. But none of it mattered, because marks didn't dictate affections and sometimes the best relationships, the most meaningful ones, were formed without it.

A gang discussed in the shadows. A man with blue eyes and dark hair watched as they formed and discussed. He would slink away once it stopped getting good. He would switch out his eyes and go look for more trouble and more worries elsewhere. He was sure to find them.

A debt collector continued collecting debts. His muscle was more subdued these days, and yet more riled up then before. He couldn't decide if it was a good thing or a bad thing. Sometimes the bartender seemed happy and other times the debt collector would have been happy to send him on his own. It was a rollercoaster of emotions. But he could tell that there was contentment behind the shifting emotions, a baseline for the feelings to settle on.

Life continued. People lived, fell in love, fell out of love, triumphed, failed, died. Seasons changed, days passed, mornings broke, night fell.

And one day, there was a beastly cry and a shattering sound and a flying vending machine through the air.

Ikebukuro breathed a sigh of relief and a breath of terror all at once.

Its overbearing watcher had returned.

* * *

UoUoUoUoUoUoU

* * *

The words came in pairs:

 _I don't like you._

 _Monster._

Damning each other and binding each other in a single breath.

Sometimes the words would fall on top of each other while their owners slept after a day of fighting or screaming or struggling or loving or coexisting.

Sometimes the words would meet when one owner had a switchblade and caused chaos and one owner had a blunt weapon and was chaos. Sometimes they met in silence.

Sometimes they met in sadness and loss and regret and blame. When one owner still couldn't walk right and one owner couldn't help but think off the loss.

Sometimes they met in laughter that had never came easy but sometimes just came with belonging.

For the most part, the words existed the way that they had always:

Ineffable and broken.

Present.

And occasionally,

Perfect.


End file.
